


A Bowl of Tears

by eliddell



Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Shin'ou is meddling again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the end of the series, Shouri succumbs to the wish to change the past, even if only for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one-weekend wonder, forty-eight hours from concept to completion (less, if I hadn't had to reconstruct most of the prologue and first scene after a networking crash in a virtual machine trashed the file). Honestly, I don't even know why I wrote it . . . but since I did, I figure I might as well inflict it on the world.
> 
> I do not own Kyo Kara Maoh! Really.

"I just want to see him one more time," I said, cradling the white-and-blue ceramic bowl in my lap, but not looking into it. Not yet. Yuuri deserved better than to have me just . . . blink out, without explaining myself. "I miss him constantly, every moment of every day, and it's been getting worse rather than better over the past five years. If you lost Wolfram, wouldn't you feel the same?" 

My brother's expression softened minutely. He still looked sixteen—with our majutsu awake, we aged as pure-blooded Mazoku—in all ways but one: his eyes were older even than his actual, chronological age. "Shouri, you know he isn't really gone—" 

"Having his soul locked up inside your friend's body where I can't talk to him or touch him isn't the same, and you know it." 

"You don't even know if he returns your feelings." 

"No, I don't," I admitted. "Hell, it took _me_ years to figure out how I felt about him. I mean, I'd never been in love before, and then to have it happen with another _guy_ —" With an effort, I stopped myself from babbling. "I just want to see him again. To talk to him. That'll be enough." _It has to be._

"You can't change the past, you know." 

"Of course I know," I snapped. "I understand just how much power that would require, and I know I don't have it, Maoh of Earth or not." _You might, though._ But I wouldn't ask. I couldn't ask. I wouldn't risk Shin Makoku's current peace just for the sake of my own happiness. "I do have enough to operate the Demon Mirror, though. And I'm starting to regret that I was polite enough to ask you for permission, rather than just stealing the damned thing from the treasure room." 

Rather then endure another round of the same argument, I looked down, into the bowl that was also one of Shin Makoku's most valuable magical treasures. 

At first, nothing happened. Then the eyes of the blue lion painted at the bottom of the bowl flashed, and the world around me winked out. I forced myself not to panic, to focus on one face, one voice, one name. One person. 

_Geneus . . ._


	2. A Bowl of Tears

" _Soukoku no Daikenja!_ " I spat the words of the title that should have been mine as much as his while I took one shaky step forward. My legs would barely support me, and the walls of Big Cimaron's great arena were blurring in my peripheral vision, but the volcanic hatred welling up within me drove me on. 

_That isn't your true appearance, is it?_ With that one sentence, he had denied everything that I was or ever would be. _How dare you speak to me so? I exist because of a decision_ we _made, and now you reject me as unfit—a faulty copy—a broken doll._ I would _slaughter_ him, tear him into little bloody pieces and feed them to a hell-paradise goala so that there was nothing left, no sign that he had ever been, that there was any question of there being any other Great Sage than me . . . because otherwise, I was nothing at all. 

One more shuffling step, and my body failed. I was familiar with the sensations by now, and I cursed Alazon inwardly as my flesh turned to lead and I began to fall forward. 

Hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me upright again, and I forced my head to turn, inching it around so that I could look over my shoulder and see which of the junior White Crows had disobeyed my orders and risked his life to come after me. 

There was nothing there. 

I blinked. No, there was something, a green glow, human in shape and proportions, flickering into being. I could feel it now . . . majutsu, powerful . . . a water-wielder like the boy-Maoh. The glow solidified, becoming a young man. A strange soukoku with the eyes and complexion of someone from the eastern part of the other world, again like the Maoh . . . no, the resemblance was closer than that, the chin and nose and cheekbones similarly shaped. But if he was the Maoh's kin, why was he encircling me even more tightly with his arms, holding me up, cradling me against his chest as he placed his body between myself and the Maoh's party? 

"Yuuri, stand down," he said in a firm, confident voice. "I'm not going to let you hurt him—not going to let either of you hurt each other." 

"Shouri—what—how—" 

My . . . rescuer? . . . sighed. "Yuuri, _for once_ would you just listen to your big brother and do as I tell you?" 

"You . . ." I whispered, then paused, suddenly too tired to finish the sentence. 

"Geneus," he said, and his eyes warmed in a way that I should have been able to put a name to, but I had forced myself to forget all such emotions. Allowing myself to feel while I played the parts I must play, for Alazon and for Lanzhil, would have been like swallowing broken glass. "Are you all right?" 

"I do not know how much longer I can remain conscious," I admitted, and then bit my tongue. I should not have so instantly trusted a stranger, but . . . that warmth in his eyes . . . and I was so very tired . . . 

"Then don't," came the gentle reply. "Just rest. I know why you're here and what you really want, and I promise you that you'll have a chance to see him before the end, and to say what you need to say. You don't have to go back to Alazon. I'm taking you home." 

I wanted to ask him something, but I seemed unable to find the words. The only one I seemed able to form was, " _Home._ " Very softly, crossing my lips like a prayer. 

"Home," Shouri (if that was truly his name) agreed. "Back to Shin Makoku. To his temple. Until then, just rest." 

My last dram of strength evaporated, and I fell helplessly forward against my strange rescuer. He bore up easily under the additional weight I had no choice but to entrust to him, and I felt him twist to speak to the others over his shoulder. "I hope you brought a wagon or something, because he's coming with us." 

"Are you insane? He's an enemy and an impostor, and you're just going to—" 

"Shut up!" There was a faint vibration as he spoke. Almost a growl. _Why are you so angry?_ "You know _exactly_ what he is, friend-of-my-brother. _Not_ an imposter, and only an enemy because he has no choice, because it was that or die. His body is made of houjutsu, and it's unstable. He needs massive amounts of houryoku just to survive . . . and now it's coming apart anyway. He has at best a couple of months left, and I am not going to let you torment him just because you'd rather he wasn't there! He deserves to spend his last days at peace." 

"Murata . . ." 

I could almost see the shrug, the quirk of the eyebrows, in my mind's eye. It should have made me angry, but that was more emotion than I could muster right now. "You seem to know a lot, Shibuya's-big-brother. And you showed up out of nowhere. Did you come through the Demon Mirror?" 

"It took you long enough to figure it out." 

Through the Mirror . . . of course. From the future . . . to this place. For me? _Why would you do all of this for me?_

A hand ran slowly down my back. A caress. What . . . ? 

"Sleep," Shouri said softly. "Stop trying to fight it. I'll be there when you wake up, and you can ask your questions then." And his arms were still around me, strong and solid, holding me up. 

Normally the darkness of unconsciousness was my greatest fear. Every time I slid into sleep, there was a chance I might never wake. But this time I found myself relaxing and letting it claim me, trusting in him. That warmth I had seen in his eyes . . . was it . . . ? 

* * *

I woke slowly, coming to terms with the world around me in stages. First, there was a surface that rose and fell against my back, a slow rocking . . . waves, I thought. A ship. I was lying naked in a bed with silken sheets, finer than I had known in this lifetime, but I remembered . . . The air smelled faintly of perfume, and my left hand lay palm-up on the surface of the blankets, pressed against someone's right. Warmth leaked into me through the contact—not the massive rush of houryoku that Alazon was wont to give me, but a slow trickle of energy that my false flesh absorbed with gratitude. 

I opened my eyes slowly and propped myself up on my other elbow. The first thing I saw was a frilly pink canopy, and I felt my eyebrows rise. 

"Sorry about the room, but Lady Celi insisted." 

I turned my head slowly to the left, where he sat on a chair crammed into the narrow space between bed and wall. 

"Shouri . . ." I murmured, remembering the name, and saw emotions chase themselves across his face—surprise, joy, relief, and that warmth. Could it really be . . . ? 

"How do you feel?" 

"Better," I admitted. "Thank you. I had not thought it was possible to fuel this worthless carcass of mine other than with houryoku, but perhaps I should have been more diligent in my research." 

"It isn't easy," he said. "It's like my power is a round peg and I'm trying to contort it to fit a star-shaped hole. But if it really is helping . . . well, I'd do far worse." He smiled, that warmth glowing from his eyes, and I could no longer lie to myself about what it was. 

"You did come all the way here for me," I said. "From the future." 

He nodded. "I . . . It's been five years. I had to see you again. I just . . ." 

He was blinking rapidly, and I raised my hand to touch his face, to cup it along his cheek. He leaned into it slightly, even though my fingers must have seemed icy to him, just as he seemed fever-warm to me. Ever since I had woken into this life, I had always been cold. 

"I am not worthy of your tears," I said. 

"And why not?" came the sudden, fierce reply. "You're a person—you have a mind and a heart and a soul. Why shouldn't I be sad, knowing that I'm going to lose someone that I . . . value?" 

_He doesn't want to say that word either,_ I realized. Perhaps he was as afraid as I was of what it would mean. 

"Is this the history that you remember?" I asked, and he looked away. "I thought not. Then I am truly less than a person—nothing more than a figment created by the Demon Mirror. Even if the 'me' that you remember had a soul, I do not." I found myself smiling crookedly. "Although I had far rather be a figment of your imagination than of Alazon's, I admit." 

"Well, that's something, anyway." An awkward pause. "I . . . are you . . . Is there anything I can get for you?" 

My wry smile widened. I was long past first love (there, I had used the word, even if only in my own head), but I remembered what it was like, that tongue-tied inability to express oneself. 

_And what do I feel for you?_ I wondered. _Could I return your feelings?_ Carefully, I separated out the gratitude for my rescue and set it aside, along with the question of why it mattered, when this was but a play of phantoms and shadows. _What do I know of you? What kind of person is it that sits beside me now?_ Quietly strong. Kind. A man to be reckoned with, but still in the act of shedding the chrysalis of confusing youth. Controlled on the surface, but with deep and violent passions lurking beneath. The clarity of his gaze suggested a sharp mind. _You are more like me than you are like your brother. He loves all equally, but you love few things fiercely._ Together, we would form that most terrifying of combinations, amplifying each other's weaknesses as well as our strengths . . . but securely bound together by mutual understanding. 

Even Shin'ou had never really understood me. 

"Tell me of the history you remember," I said. "How did we meet?" 

He smiled, remembering. "I got into a fight with your men, trying to protect my brother. And then you kidnapped me." 

I prompted him gently through the entire mad story, less interested in the plot (although some of the things he revealed were new to me) than in what a choice of words or a turn of phrase might tell me about him. Much of what he had to say merely solidified my impression of him. There was an openness to what he said that was almost terrifying. He held nothing back—not doubts, not fears, not embarrassments—but at the same time I could tell that he would not have bared himself so for anyone else. He trusted in my understanding. He trusted . . . in me. 

"We were able to save your soul, but . . . not you," he finished, tears glittering in his eyes. "You've been dormant, resident in Murata's body, ever since. I've spent the past five years studying and waiting—learning to control my maryoku better, so that I could use the Demon Mirror without burning myself out. Learning to function as the Maoh of Earth. Trying to get you out of my head, unsuccessfully. When Bob—the old Maoh—stepped down a couple of months ago, I knew it was time." 

_Maoh. I should have known._ He was completely unlike his brother, and yet his nature spoke to the oldest of my memories. Shouri might have been deadly earnest rather than mischievous, but there was a likeness there . . . That knowledge twisted inside me, pain that was also half pleasure. 

Could he take the place of the one who had been the other half of me? 

"You did not choose to take up with . . ." What had the name been? " . . . Murata?" A test. The need for it intensified that twisting pain. _Could I love you? I think I already half do. And if I am wrong about you, better that I tear the seedling out before it can properly take root._

"Why would I?" He knew what I was asking, I could see that in his expression. Perhaps he even knew why I was asking it. "I was never attracted to Murata. Hell, most of the time, I have to work hard not to throttle him. He lies. All the time. To his allies. To cover for himself. It isn't an attractive personality trait. I won't say that you and he have nothing in common, but you're different people, and it's you that I . . . love." He flushed as he spoke the word, and the pain inside me twisted one last time, and faded into certainty. 

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," I said, as my hand found the nape of his neck and drew him down. "Nothing at all." I breathed the words softly against his lips. 

He was not an experienced kisser, but did seem to be a quick study and willing to learn. And he never closed his eyes. He was drinking in the sight of me, the knowledge of who was touching him, as his arms slid around me and our tongues moved one against the other. 

"I . . . May I make love to you? If you're feeling well enough, that is." There was that flush again, that virgin uncertainty. 

"I would welcome it." Until that very hour, I had been uncertain of whether my false body was even capable—his kiss was the first thing that had ever stirred it. But even had it not been, I would still have wanted him to touch me. 

For the first time in many years, I was not alone. 

He fumbled at the fastenings of his jacket, and I smiled and began to help him, kissing him gently on jaw and throat and that first revealed slice of his chest. He had a good body, perhaps not as finely toned as some that I had known, but young and healthy . . . and truth be told, his looks mattered very little to me. I had inhabited all different sorts of bodies myself, been tall and short, thin and heavy-set, male and female. Human and Mazoku. Appearance, to my mind, mattered less than essence. 

I smiled gently at his embarrassed laugh when he realized he needed more space than the narrow slice in which he had wedged his chair in order to get his boots off, and helped him with his trousers when his hands began to shake again. He pushed down the last brief garment he wore about his hips with sudden bravado, and I flipped back the blankets, inviting him to lie beside me. He lay down gingerly, as though he thought the mattress might collapse under him and drop us both to the floor, and I pressed forward, smiling again at the startled squeak he vented as my arousal rubbed against his. 

"I didn't know until we undressed you that these went so far down," he said a moment later, fingers tracing the purple marking at the base of my ribcage. It was far from the only one that my clothing normally hid. Long, twining lines ran down my spine and separated to curve over my hips and buttocks, supplemented by slanting wedges along the outsides of my thighs, and, perhaps most embarrassing, a series of chevrons that led back from the base of my manhood, like pointers for my inexperienced new lover. 

"They were not of my choosing," I said. "But if they give you pleasure, I am glad I have them. You are turning red again," I added. 

"I figured, but there's something I need to tell you, and it's kind of difficult. I . . . I haven't . . . I've read a lot about how this is supposed to work between a man and a man, but I've never actually _done_ it before," he blurted out at last. "I'm worried that I'm going to hurt you." 

"Your concern does you credit, but I am not that fragile," I said. "Indeed, were my life force strong enough for me to use this body to the fullest, I could overpower you without too much difficulty, I dare say. I promise I will stop you if you seem about to do something that might truly damage me. Such pain as I might feel despite that, I will welcome. But if you want to enter me, we will require something to ease the way." I felt a shiver, a hungry pulse, run through my body as I spoke of him being inside me. I wanted that. Wanted it badly. Or if he chose to take that part, I would not object to the reverse, as long as we were together. 

"I brought . . . I'd hoped . . ." 

"Then there is nothing to worry about . . . and no hurry," I added. "I want to feel you in every way, not just that one. Touch me . . . taste me . . . Shouri . . ." 

He groaned and buried his face in the hollow of my throat, and the warmth of his mouth left chill wetness behind when he raised his head again. I countered by suckling on the side of his neck, leaving behind a red-purple mark that said _mine_ to anyone who might lay eyes on him before it faded. I almost laughed, finding myself so possessive, and wondered fleetingly whether he would keep it when he returned to his empty future. 

Touches, some more gentle than others, given and received. I discovered that his feet were ticklish, making him blush and laugh and squirm. He found a place that even I had not known about, midway between my left collarbone and my nipple, where an aggressively stabbing tongue could send a shockwave through me. And when he brought out a white tube marked with unfamiliar lettering, I raised and spread my legs to give him the fullest possible access to my body. He must have done his reading with care, for he knew the theory well, spreading the slippery gel around the puckered entrance to my body with a gentle touch, then sliding a single well-greased finger in. It twisted slowly, seeking . . . and I gasped and bucked as it found what it sought. 

"More," I begged, and his expression was a study, pleasure and pride and embarrassment all mixed together. He added a second finger, and I angled my body so that they pressed against me just so with each stroke. The ache of being stretched was immaterial by comparison, and my manhood had become an iron rod leaking molten metal from the tip. 

The third finger nearly undid me, and I dared not let him work it inside me for long. "Enough. I am ready for you." He hesitated, and I added firmly, "I am certain, Shouri. Mount me before I spill." Now it was my turn to flush—my control should have been greater, but it had been so very long . . . 

He slicked himself and got into position, but once there he could not seem to move. In the end, I was forced to wrap my legs around his waist and pull him forward, through the flash of pain as the head of his manhood pushed past a muscle still too tight for it. 

"I am not made of glass," I reminded him with a bit of an acid edge, and he flushed adorably and muttered an apology. "Did I not say that I wanted you?" I added more gently, and his smile was grateful. 

Then he pulled back and pushed forward again, and I lost all control of my tongue, crying out, babbling nonsense. "Shouri—yes, there—harder— _ah!_ You . . . so good . . ." _I have wanted this for so long, without being able to articulate what or why. How long has it been since I was desired—loved—needed for myself and not my skills or my knowledge—so good—ah, please, more—Shouri!_ I trembled and spurted my seed against his belly, muscles tightening around him. One last ragged thrust, and he moaned low in his throat as he spilled himself inside me. 

Once he was spent and soft, he pulled himself out of me, leaving warmth and wet behind, and lay down by my side, and gently kissed me. "Thank you." 

"You make that sound as though I was only enduring your touch," I teased, and was surprised to feel a stirring between my legs at his answering flush. "And I am not done with you yet." 

His eyes widened, lips parting, and I dove in for a kiss, sliding my hand between his thighs to stroke his manhood and tease the hanging sac behind it with my fingertips. It took little to make his body take interest again, and I continued to pleasure him with my wrist and my palm as my fingers worked their way further back. He made a muffled noise as they found what they sought, and I withdrew. 

"If you are uncomfortable with the thought of being taken, I will not force you," I said, watching him closely. "Although it would give me great pleasure if you did permit it. Let me show you how good it can be." 

He shifted, wriggling, seeking a comfortable position that he seemed unable to find. "I never even considered it," he admitted. "Five years of fantasies, and I was always on top. Give me a moment." He closed his eyes, curling in on himself slightly, and when he opened them again, they were full of determination. "I'm scared," he admitted. "But if I wait until I'm completely ready—if I ever am—we'll run out of time. And I . . . kind of like the idea of you leaving a bit of yourself inside me. Something to bind us together, even when I have to go back. Do it." 

I kissed him again, slowly. Savouring. "We need not hurry so much as that, beloved. You need to relax yourself before I attempt to enter you, even with a fingertip. I have no wish to cause you more pain than absolutely necessary." 

"It hurts?" he said, and I could hear the note of alarm he was trying to suppress. "You hear so many contradictory stories—" 

"There is usually a bit of an ache if one is not accustomed—like the ache of overexertion in some other muscle," I said. "If it is worse than that, then your partner is unskilled at best . . . which I am not, I hope. I promise, you will forget your discomfort quickly." 

I took up the tube he had abandoned among the sheets, wondering in passing at the nature of its slick white substance, neither metal, nor bone, nor leather, nor anything else with which I had any experience. I squeezed it until my fingers were well-coated, and returned my attention to Shouri, who swallowed and spread his legs. 

I set the tube aside so that I might wrap my other hand around his manhood, slicking it a bit with the remains of my first release, still splattered across his stomach. Then I ignored his apprehensive eyes on me and began to stroke and squeeze. 

It took some time for him to relax, but I am nothing if not patient. It occurred to me that I had perhaps been a bit premature, and so I lowered my face between his thighs, breathing in the scent of healthy young male, musky with arousal—a finer perfume than the owner of this ship had lavished on anything in the room. I licked his sac first, and felt him shiver, then began to nuzzle and lick my way back until I found a rough pucker. I teased at it first, tracing the edges, eliciting twitches and shivers and soft cries that held a note of bewilderment— _how can this feel so good?_ I smiled, remembering how I had wondered the same thing myself once, very long ago. It was not a very sanitary practice, of course, but I hardly thought I was presently in danger of dying of any disease contracted so. And then I stabbed my tongue inside Shouri, and felt him jerk. 

"Geneus, what are you— _Shin'ou_ , that's— _aaah!_ " 

_Now_ he was relaxed, panting, eyes slightly glazed as I raised my head and slipped my hand into its place. His body outright welcomed the first finger, opening to me, manhood twitching as I found that spot deep inside him. I took my time, thrusting steadily in and out, before attempting to stretch him more. By the time I felt he was ready, I was dripping-hard again—we both were. 

"Shouri," I said as I rose above him, rolling the name over my tongue, tasting it, savouring it. " _My_ Shouri." 

"Yours," he gasped as I plunged inside. "Yours, always." 

His body, uncertain what to make of this intrusion, squeezed me firmly, and the heat . . . I was not going to last long, and so I set about pleasuring us both with a will. Whatever fear had filled him had burned away now, and he rose instinctively to meet me with each thrust. When I reached between us and stroked him, that proved his undoing, and he spent himself with a cry. And as he had with me, I lasted only moments as his body squeezed me even more tightly. 

_This is all I can give you—my touch, my seed. My love, for whatever it may be worth._ The thought was a spike of pain amidst the pleasure. _You deserve so much more. A strong Maoh, and a fine, brave, generous young man . . . everything I have in this lifetime could never be enough._

Afterwards, we lay side by side, deliciously spent. 

"I suppose we should clean up," Shouri muttered as he cuddled me close, "but right now I'd rather just . . . be here." 

"We would have to change the sheets to get properly clean, in any case," I murmured back. His body was so warm . . . "Tell me about your Earth—surely it has changed, these past two thousand years." 

He chuckled, nuzzling my forehead. "You could say that—in fact, I doubt you would recognize the place." 

"My last incarnation there was in the Middle Kingdom, during the reign of Zhou Nan." 

"Zhou . . . I think that's the Warring States Period . . . a very long time ago, anyway. I did Chinese history in school, but I have to admit I don't remember all that much." 

"Start wherever you find it easiest," I told him, and settled in to listen. 

* * *

He stayed by my side all through that trip, inseparable to the point where his brother thought it bizarre. I do not think the boy-Maoh understood that we were lovers . . . at least at first, while I still had the strength. Shouri fed me what power he could, but it was only a trickle, and I faded quickly, even my will not strong enough to maintain my health. 

But he remained by my side, even when my body had deteriorated to skin and bone. When I could no longer walk, he carried me. And when I wept with anger and frustration and the sheer pain of weakness and loss, he kissed the tears away. He talked himself hoarse about the other world to give me the small pleasure of learning and keeping my mind engaged. 

He carried me from the coach on the afternoon we arrived at the temple, and I clung to him weakly as he greeted the one who had come to meet us. 

"Ulrike . . ." 

"Lord Shouri." The diminutive figure bowed to us. "And Lord Geneus." 

"Genshi Miko . . ." It was all the greeting I could manage, but she smiled warmly at me when she heard it. 

"He awaits you inside," she said. "Let me show you the way." 

We did not need to go very far. She led us into a sitting room not far from the doors, where a shadowed figure awaited us. Shouri set me down on a couch, but he did not sit himself, instead looming over me protectively. 

"Shouri. Ulrike. Would you please wait outside? I would like to have this conversation in private." 

The sound of his voice stabbed me like a knife. " _Shin'ou . . ._ " 

He came into the light then, and he was just as I remembered, flamboyant clothes, golden hair artfully disarranged, and eyes as blue as the clear summer sky. And as he turned to face me fully, he smiled, but there was a darkness in the depths of those eyes that he seemed unable to erase. 

"I'm not going anywhere," Shouri said, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. 

I placed mine overtop of it. "Beloved, it will be fine. Please do as he says." Having heard him speak of the true history, I understood why he was concerned, but this was not the incident that he remembered. 

A long pause, then, "If you're sure." And while he did leave the room, he also glanced back over his shoulder before shutting the door. 

There was a long moment of silence, that held until Shin'ou broke it. 

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is all my fault." 

I felt a crooked smile of my own curving my lips. "Shall we argue about blame now? It scarcely matters, in any case. This is not real. When the Demon Mirror pulls Shouri back into his body, this entire history will cease to exist as though it had never been, and you and I along with it." 

"Mmm. Well, yes and no. It's true that this isn't real, but not in the way you think. You see, Shouri never actually used the Demon Mirror." His expression, a combination of amusement, sheepishness, and pure mischief, was so familiar that I had to repress a groan. 

"What have you done now?" 

"I directed his power along an alternative route, you might say. Oh, don't give me that look. I helped him build an illusion and draw your soul into it. So there are three real things here: you, me, and him. And if there's any kind of future out there for you, you'll remember this, and him." Shin'ou spread his hands. "I concealed your memories of the real history. I'll return them now, with apologies—both for hiding them, and for giving them back, because there's a lot in there that I doubt you're any more proud of than I am." 

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, a previously unnoticed curtain in my mind was torn away, and I could _see_. And he was quite correct that there was a great deal there that I was not proud of. Tears burned my eyes, and I was too weak to prevent them from spilling over. I felt his weight beside me on the couch, a comforting arm slung about my shoulders. 

"It really is all my fault," Shin'ou said. "If I'd kept a closer eye on things instead of playing around, I would have known about the incarnation of the Sage who spent his life working himself to the bone for my sake. I could have stopped all of this before it even started, just by speaking to him before he had a chance to make that crystal. And then I screwed up again when I let Murata persuade me that you were a potentially dangerous nuisance. If only I had let myself _see_ , you would never have almost become . . . that. But only Shouri was clear-sighted enough to understand you, and Yuuri . . . well, he didn't understand, but he didn't care how you came to be there, either. For him, if it walks like a person and talks like a person, it _is_ a person. Simple." 

"Am I then to believe that you are complex?" I teased, falling back easily into a half-forgotten relationship . . . although I would never quite trust him again, not the way I once had. 

Shin'ou snorted, then sobered. "We don't have much time left, and there's one more thing I have to tell you: there is hope." 

The room seemed to be getting darker, and I blinked, willing my vision to clear, but the light did not return, and Shin'ou's voice seemed to be coming from further and further away. 

"I don't understand the nature of it, and I get the impression that there's a chance it may not work out, but take it back into the darkness with you, old friend: Hope. A chance. That you may, one day . . ." 

I waited, floating numbly in emptiness, for the next word, but nothing came save an inexorable tug at my mind, drawing me toward a sleep from which I might never wake. 

And the thought that I fought to hold onto as I was pulled under was no longer of him, blue-eyed and golden-haired, but of another. And for an instant, I seemed to catch a glimpse of that person, now closest to my heart, sitting slumped over a blue-and-white bowl with a dram of clear liquid inside. A tear grew at the corner of his eye and ran down his face to add its substance to the puddle. 

_Oh, Shouri . . ._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing sex from Geneus' point of view is always an interesting experience, given the diction I tend to inflict on him.
> 
> I just discovered that I consistently misspell "embarrassing". How very . . . um.


	3. Epilogue

"Shut up, José," I said. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters." 

Four days since I'd returned from Shin Makoku. Four days during which it had taken every ounce of my will to heave myself out of bed and walk across the hall to the private office I'd inherited from Bob. Four days during which I hadn't been able to think of anything but his face, his voice as he spoke my name, the gentle touch of his hand. The intensely erotic memory of our lovemaking—him rising above me to accept something that I never intended to offer anyone else—just made it worse. 

José sighed. "I _told_ you that seeing him again was the worst possible thing you could do to yourself. Well, I guess regressing back to the early stages of mourning is a natural reaction under the circumstances. I'll give you a couple of weeks to snap out of it, but after that, I'm referring you to a colleague of mine. Even if I have to have someone tie you up and carry you to your appointment with her." 

I gave him a cold, leaden look. "Get out." 

"Okay, okay. Just . . . don't do anything stupid, alright?" 

I shook my head. I knew exactly what kind of stupid thing he meant, and I wasn't going to do it. 

That wouldn't bring us back together, after all. Not unless Murata let him fly free. 

As José opened the door to my office, there was a commotion in the hall. 

"I tell you, he _needs_ to see this," said the voice I least wanted to hear. "Do you think I would have come here if it wasn't important? Hell, do you even know how many classes I've cut to get to Switzerland? I'm going to have to switch most of my grades to pass/fail for this term to keep from screwing up my GPA and costing me my chance at grad school!" 

I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my aching head. "Let him in," I called, knowing that the fastest way to get rid of Murata was probably to let him do whatever he was here to do. Otherwise, he'd keep coming back until he got the chance. 

Murata Ken at twenty-one _looked_ like he was twenty-one, unlike Yuuri. He'd left his maryoku largely dormant, explaining that trying to bind it to an element while he was in a human body would probably just end up damaging him. Someone who didn't know might have thought we were the same age. 

"Hello there, Shibuya's-big-brother. I have something to show you." With a flourish, he laid a photograph on the desk in front of me. 

I suppose I still had room for the least stirrings of curiosity inside myself, because I looked down . . . and froze at what I saw. I knew that face. I'd burned it into my memory. But I had never, ever seen it, or the body that went with it, in the setting of a modern hospital, lying on starched sheets with an IV running into an exposed arm, hair cropped down close to the skull. 

"If this is a joke, friend-of-my-brother . . ." 

Murata shook his head. "My taste in pranks isn't that hurtful. I never intended to keep him inside me forever, you know—especially not when we never entirely stopped hating each other's guts. But it took a while to set this up. I had to get researchers who were willing to go ahead with a human clone despite the ethical questions, develop and refine the forced-aging techniques, reconstruct as much DNA as possible from a degraded four-thousand-year-old hair sample, figure out what genetically distinguishes Mazoku and humans so that we could be sure that the bits we had to patch with my DNA wouldn't result in you having horribly unequal lifespans, and then actually do the job . . ." He ran out of fingers to tick things off on, and shrugged. "He hasn't regained consciousness yet, but it's only a matter of time until he does, and I figured you'd want to be there when it happened." 

I stood up so quickly that my chair fell over. "Where? Where is he?" 

"At a facility in Hokkaido. I have a plane standing by." 

I tore out of the office without a backward glance or an explanation, trailing confused staff behind me. 

It wasn't a short flight, but twelve hours later, I was sitting beside his bed in my shirt sleeves, holding his hand, when his eyelids flickered. 

"Geneus?" I said, and his eyes snapped open. Black, but then they'd templated this body directly from that of the Original Sage, not from the degenerate shell he had once worn. 

"Shou . . . ri . . ." 

"Let me get you some water," I said hurriedly. They'd left a pitcher and a plastic cup by his bedside. I spilled some in my haste, got it half-full, helped him sit up and bring it to his lips. Murata had filled me in on Geneus' expected condition on the way here, on how he was in pretty much the same state as someone who'd been bedridden and comatose for a very long time. He'd need physio, lots of it, but the basic coordination seemed to be there. 

"Where are we?" was his next question, as sharp eyes darted around the room. "Is this your world?" 

"Yeah." 

"It is much stranger than I imagined. So this is the hope he had no time to explain to me," he added with a quiet smile. _What?_ "My body . . ." 

"Is basically healthy, but hasn't had the opportunity to build up any muscle yet. There are people here who can work with you to make that go as fast as possible. And, well, we can get you a mirror later, but basically, you look . . . like yourself. Except without any purple. And your hair's short, but it'll grow." _Stop babbling,_ I told myself. 

"Ah. Shouri, love—" 

Just the word shot through me like lightning. _How does he know? And he—_

"Shin'ou was apparently feeling guilty," he said as he clasped my hand, weaving our fingers together. "When you made your attempt to use the Demon Mirror, he drew my soul into it. I remember everything, and the only thing I regret is that it may be some time before I am well enough again to make love to you." 

My eyes stung with tears, and there was a laugh working its way up my throat. I swallowed it back and substituted, "Under the circumstances, I'm not about to slap you, but . . . will you marry me?" 

When his hand connected with the side of my face, there was enough force behind it to sting, just a little. And it was all the answer I needed. 

I gathered him into my arms, and he sighed and leaned against me, chin resting on my shoulder. 

This time, I wouldn't have to let him go ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered tagging this "happy ending", but I figured it would give too much away. Heh.
> 
> And no, this is not one of the Shouri/Geneus longfics I've been working on since the end of _Repatriation_. I finished the first of those last week, which means that I'll probably try to proofread it for continuity and such this weekend and start posting it next week.


End file.
